Detective Mum solves crime of her stolen phone but says cops ‘do nothing’ before it vanishes again

A mum turned detective and ‘solved the crime’ of her stolen phone – handing police its exact whereabouts – only for it to “vanish again” after they failed to get it back. Katie Chalmers says she ‘heard nothing back’ from Lincolnshire Police for a week after reporting that her iPhone 14 Pro had been swiped from her desk at work on October 12. The 44-year-old says despite offering CCTV footage of when her phone was nicked and its exact location – all available thanks to Find My iPhone software and Google Earth – cops were slow to respond.

The mum-of-two watched helplessly as her GBP1,500 device travelled more than 100 miles from Benington, Lincolnshire, to a phone shop in North London. It was only after phoning the shop up and demanding the device back, that the location ‘dropped off’ after the person who answered furiously denied knowing about it. An infuriated Katie regularly updated her 140,000 TikTok followers about the phone’s journey – and claimed that cops failed to help her get it – despite her ‘solving the crime’.

Katie, from Boston, Lincolnshire, said: “We solved the crime on behalf of the police, and even then they haven’t stepped in. I was at work in a nursery in a garden centre and it was my first week at work. I was filming using the work device and also using my phone to take videos from different angles, when I returned to my desk it had gone.

“These girls had come for a shopping spree. We saw them on the CCTV footage stealing the phone. It really was gut-wrenching.

I was most hurt when I got an email asking if I was trying to reset the password on my mobile phone, that was them trying to break in. “All the contents of that device are still there, and that feels incredibly violating. There are personal pictures.

I’ve been with my partner for 10 years, I wouldn’t want those photos to fall into anybody’s hands.” Katie said she immediately reported the theft to cops but only heard back a week later, by then the phone became untraceable. Katie said: “It was a week before they came back to us and they still haven’t collected the CCTV.

“They called me about my mobile phone but it seemed to be about logging it for my insurance company. They appear to not have done anything about any of it. It was horrible and really frustrating.

“It was just right there in plain sight. It’s just a mobile phone. It might be different if we had a serial killer on the loose, but I’ve done all the work for them, they just have to pick it up.

“If I didn’t have to be at work I would’ve driven there myself. My phone was GBP1,500 and to get it back I would’ve been quite prepared, although a little scared, to knock on somebody’s door. Even now if they went to the locations, I bet they’d uncover a minefield of stolen goods.”

After tracking her phone as it left Benington, Lincolnshire, Katie believed the device changed hands in a retail park car park in Peterborough before spending the weekend in a residential property. Katie says she “couldn’t believe it” when the device was taken to a phone shop in North London after using Google Earth to track down its precise location. Exasperated Katie took matters into her own hands by getting 57-year-old partner Peter Richardson to phone up the shop and confront them about it.

Katie said: “It was absolutely that call to the shop that tipped them off, 1,000%. “Within six minutes of the phone call to that shop, the phone was leaving the shop. The phone has disappeared off the face of the earth.

I don’t regret calling the shop at all, it was there. If there had been a shadow of doubt in my mind that it wasn’t there I wouldn’t have done it.” Katie says her insurance policy doesn’t fully cover the cost of the iPhone so will be forced to buy a new phone after paying off her current contract.

She shared her predicament on TikTok, where her video racked up more than 90,000 views, 1,500 likes, and 160 comments. One user commented: “Police won’t do anything, same happened to a friend. He gave the police the exact address where the phone was for two days!

The police did nothing.” Another wrote: “This happened to me. I tracked it for four months. Police wouldn’t do anything.

I ended up knocking on the door and got it back.

Insurance paid out too.”

Lincolnshire Police were contacted for comment.